2012 Job Market Update

What You Should Expect from the 2012 Job Market

 
All indicators point towards a slow and steady growth for 2012.  Market recovery has been inching up since mid-2009 and it will continue moving forward over the next 12 months.
Every year, HireVeterans.com asks employers about their plans to hire for the coming year.  This year, HireVeterans.com spoke to over 1,000 Human Resource managers and here are the results;

• 27 percent plan to hire full-time employees in 2012
• 14 percent plan to cut back staff levels.

These numbers are slightly better than 2011 and much better than years past.   In 2008 for example just 12 percent of employers planned to hire new employees while 18 percent planned to cut staff. 
Historically, companies have been reserved in predicting hiring needs.  Follow-up surveys done by many other job hiring agencies throughout the year typically find that employers hire more and downsize less than initially projected. 
Additionally, the small business employers are ramping up for hiring in 2012.  Nineteen percent of companies with 50 or fewer employees plan to bring on additional full-time staff next year, a 4 percent jump over 2011. Better still, 21 percent of companies with fewer than 250 employees and 22 percent of companies with fewer than 500 employees also reported plans to add staff next year.  These numbers are both increases over the projections for 2011.
It’s widely known that small business provides half of the private-sector jobs in the U.S.A.   They have accounted for about 65 percent of the total job creation in the past two decades.  Thus, it’s good news that small business is bullish for 2012.